Rayma Suprani, one of the few female cartoonists in Venezuela, spoke at the 2015 Oslo Freedom Forum on 26 May about the role that humor plays in resisting tyranny, and how cartoons are the thermometers by which we measure freedom. She believes that critical drawings are crucial to testing the strengths of a democracy. Suprani worked at El Universal, one of Venezuela’s largest newspapers, for 19 years before she was fired last year after publishing a cartoon that mocked the legacy of Hugo Chávez and the state of the Venezuelan health care system. She remains defiant, and reminds us that humor is the key to ending repression: we should teach our children to wield pens, not guns.